Dorothy Stevens

Dorothy Stevens (1888-1966), RCA, OSA, CPE, known in her time as a strong-willed, trouser-wearing woman who once went to a costume party with Frederick Varley dressed as the Cleopatra to his Anthony, was born in Toronto in 1888. When she was 15 years old, she left Canada to begin her art training at the Slade School of Art in London. Just four years later she moved onto Paris to study at Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and Academie Colarossi. Stevens was among those Canadian artists who received the bulk of their training in Europe, including Clarence Gagnon and Frank Armington, the latter of whom held a studio next door to the Chaumiere and Colarossi and became a mentor to Stevens during her time there. Stevens’ European training—and certainly her notorious charisma and drive—propelled her forward in the art world; after a few years in Paris, during which she exhibited at 1910 Spring exhibition of Societe des Artistes Francais, Stevens returned to Canada in 1911, where she would define her career as a most influential printmaker of the early 20^th century.

As Rosemarie Tovell notes in A New Class of Art, during Stevens’ time, printmaking was still a fledgling art in Canada. Thanks to European-trained etchers such as Stevens, their experience and practice abroad served them well to help revive the Toronto printmaking community as well as the Canadian etching revival at a broader scope. Canada was quick to pick up on this renewed interest and energy in printmaking, and beginning in 1912, the Canadian Magazine, headed by Newton MacTavish, started featuring prints made by some of the popular etchers of the times. These artists included Stevens among other key printmakers such as Walter R. Duff (her contemporary), Clarence Gagnon, and Ivan Neilson.

That same year, Stevens work was featured in the Fifth Loan Exhibition in Toronto, and she received most favourable commentary from the critics:

“‘Miss Dorothy Stevens, of Toronto…may be described as the boldest of the Canadian etchers. She has a cleverness and daring that give a distinctiveness to all her pictures. [She] revels in figure work and even when her outlines seem a little crude they indicate originality. When she turns to landscape there is a bigness and scope to her ideas that suggest the modern English etchers.’” (Qtd. in Tovell 112-113).

Just as printmaking was beginning to see an upswing in popularity, the beginning of the first world war shifted collective focus, and the purposes and value of printmaking took on a new role; the war broke out in 1914 and two years later, newspaper magnate Max Aitken established the Canadian War Memorials Fund with the intention to document and publicize Canadian military activities; the idea was that these prints would then be sold to raise money for the war effort.

However, Aitken’s plan was to involve only British artists; this exclusion naturally upset many Canadian artists, and Aitken was receptive to allowing more Canadian artists to be included in the project. He took on Cyril Barraud, Gyrth Russell, A.Y. Jackson, and James Kerr-Lawson; Caroline Armington was permitted to join at her own request.

But more Canadians—and more women artists—were wanting to get involved than what Aitken had planned (and was willing) to accommodate. Aitken conferred with Eric Brown, the director of the National Gallery of Canada, and in 1918 Brown began facilitating the distribution of funds to Canadian artists. That year, Stevens heard of the fund from Frances Loring, who told Stevens about her plan to draw the women working the munitions factories in Toronto. In response, Stevens promptly sent off a letter to Brown requesting a commission. Her request was granted and Brown accepted two of her plates: Munitions Heavy Shells and Building the Freighter.

It is commonly agreed that Stevens’ prints were among the best produced within the program. Her prints showed the hustle of the workplace—as Tovell aptly named it, the “grit and clamour” of the plants, the hard work, the disenchanted workers. Key to Stevens’ print of the munitions factory is the presence of women, who had just been given the right to vote in 1918. Stevens simultaneously emphasizes motion, both that of human and machine; the figures are pictured with their arms and hands mid-movement and the picture is flanked on either side by man and woman both with their arms at right angles, complimenting the similarly sharp corners and edges of the machinery surrounding them. In Industrial Images, Rosemary Donegan draws our attention to the boredom of this repetitive work, visible in the men and women’s expressions. While Stevens’ print captures an energy and gravity of the work going on, it lacks the “glorification of industry” often found in similar examples of the ‘war at home.’

In spite of what Brown had agreed to, Stevens insisted on doing four more plates. It would have seemed that Brown resented Stevens’ persistence; he allowed her to print in an edition of merely 25 prints, while C.W. Jefferys did 50 and Arthur Lismer got a hundred. One might wonder if it was Stevens’ pushiness as an artist or as a woman that Brown disapproved; Stevens was known to be an extraordinary person, described as “loud, raucous, profane [and] amusing,” with a “voice like Tallulah Bankhead,” who chain smoked and claimed at one time that she went to so many parties she didn’t see daylight for three weeks straight (CITE).

After the war, Stevens won a traveling scholarship to return to Europe and continue her studies. In 1930 she married, becoming Mrs. Reginald de Bruno Austin. She later became president of the Toronto-based Women’s Art Association and taught classes there, often taking her students to the Toronto Islands when weather was favourable and encouraging them to draw whatever they saw. When the second world war began, Stevens organized dances to raise money for the war effort. She died in a hospital in Toronto at 77.

Stevens enjoyed critical acclaim and commercial success throughout her career, which had many highlights, including winning the silver medal at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, but the height of which many might agree were her remarkable etchings made during the first world war. Her work is held within the collections at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Art Gallery of Alberta. Beyond her art (or thanks to it), Stevens is remembered for her boldness and intense personality, it coming as no surprise that she was reputed to have thrown the best parties in the city.

Written by Mina Ivosev.

---

Sources:

Donegan, Rosemary. Industrial Images / Images Industrielles. Hamilton: Art Gallery of Hamilton, 1987.

“Dorothy Stevens.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation.

Tovell, Rosemarie L. A New Class of Art: The Artist’s Print in Canadian Art 1877-1920. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1996.

Christopher Varley. “Dorothy Stevens.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 25 May 2008.